| Wang Guoqi told Congress he had helped remove the organs from prisoners whose executions had been intentionally botched | |
Harvesting and sale of body parts
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Articles: 3. BLOODY HARVEST - Is China harvesting organs of Falun Gong practitioners, killing them in the process? A Japanese television news agency reporter and the ex-wife of a surgeon in March made claims this was happening at Liaoning Hospital in Sujiatin, China. Are those claims true? 5. Are organs harvested from executed prisoners in the Laogai? |
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Evidence of organ harvesting from Falun Gong prisoners, from New Tang Dynasty Television
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbZLtR9HZeI
Added: August 26, 2008
ANCHOR:
New evidence has come to light that further proves the case that the Chinese Communist Party has been harvesting organs from illegally detained Falun Gong practitioners. A new documentary has unwittingly bolstered the case championed by human rights lawyers David Kilgour [KILL-gore] and David Matas [MAY-tuss]. Here's that story:
NARRATION:
Organs are being harvested from live Falun Gong detainees in Mainland China--this is what David Kilgour—a former Canadian Member of Parliament—and David Matas—a Canadian human rights lawyer—have been saying since 2006. They've been traveling the world with their investigative report in hand, trying to get governments to recognize these atrocities and help put a stop to them. Well, that job just became a little easier--thanks, ironically, to the Chinese Communist Party.
As a key part of their investigation into the organ harvesting allegations, Kilgour and Matas paid a research team to call Chinese hospitals pretending to be searching for an organ. One of these callers talked to a Dr. Lu Guoping. Dr. Lu said that he had traveled to prisons to select Falun Gong detainees who would be killed for their organs, and that his hospital used these organs.
But recently, Dr. Lu was interviewed as part of a documentary film by Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV. In the documentary, Dr. Lu acknowledges that it was he who spoke with this investigator over the phone—but he says his words were changed in the transcript, and that he never admitted to any of the above.
This Phoenix TV documentary has been endorsed by China's Communist Party and is being distributed through its overseas consulates.
But what the documentary fails to mention is that there's an audio recording of that original phone call. So now that Dr. Lu has admitted he was the one who spoke with the investigator, the Communist Party will have a hard time claiming the investigation was made up. And that's a big boost to the credibility of the Kilgour-Matas team.
On their website, Kilgour and Matas are making available the Phoenix TV documentary video alongside the original audio recording of the undercover phone interview. There's also a transcript of the interview in Chinese and English . You can find it all at www.Organ Harvest Investigation.net or click on the link beneath this video on our website,
ntdtv.com.
This is Matt Gnaizda and Ben Youngquest, NTD, New York.
China denies allegations of harvesting and selling the body parts of executed prisoners
June 28, 2001 Posted: 6:23 AM EDT (1023 GMT)
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- China has denied allegations of harvesting and selling the body parts of executed prisoners, sometimes before the donors were clinically dead.
The allegations were made by a Chinese doctor, Wang Guoqi, during testimony to U.S. lawmakers Wednesday, where he described coordinated procedures between surgeons and Chinese government officials to extract convicts' organs immediately after executions.
Wang, who is seeking political asylum in the U.S., said he worked at execution grounds, helping surgeons operate in ambulances to harvest the organs of executed prisoners, without prior consent.
Denying the claims, Beijing accused Wang of lying.
"Any clear-sighted person can see that this is a vicious slander against China," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said.
"I believe for personal purposes, they have gone so far as to create those sensational lies."
"With regard to the trade in human organs, China strictly prohibits that. The major source of human organs comes from voluntary donations from Chinese citizens," she said.
Chinese officials say organs are only transplanted from executed convicts with consent.
China executes more prisoners each year than any other nation. According to reports from the human rights group Amnesty International, China executed more than 1,000 people last year alone.
Wang's testimony is not the first time such an allegation has been made, but his testimony is considered rare because it offers an eyewitness account from someone who claims to have been directly involved in the practice.
A state department official in Washington told CNN the White House has expressed its concerns to China over reports of the practice.
Wang told the U.S. House of representatives Subcommittee on Human Rights he had also worked at a crematorium, carving skin off convicts bodies for use on burns victims.
Corneas and other body tissue were also removed for transplant, Wang said.
His hospital, the Tianjin Paramilitary Police General Brigade Hospital, then sold the body parts for profit.
Speaking before the subcommittee, Wang described the procedures, saying that often group executions were organized to facilitate the demand for organ transplants.
"It is with deep regret and remorse that I stand here today testifying against the practices of organ and tissue sales from death row prisoners," he said.
"My work required me to remove the skin and corneas from the corpses of over one hundred prisoners, and on a couple of occasions, victims of intentionally botched executions."
Wang said that prisoners were given blood tests to determine their compatibility with donor seekers.
He said his conscience was tortured after an incident in October 1995 when he was ordered to remove skin from a prisoner still alive.
The prisoner -- sentenced to death for robbery and murder -- was administered an anti-blood clotting agent and then shot.
Wang said the prisoner did not die immediately and was taken into the back of an ambulance where urologists removed his kidneys.
Wang and other surgeons then harvested the prisoner's skin before putting the body -- still not dead -- in a plastic bag then into a truck.
Shortly after that incident Wang said he had requested a transfer within the hospital before entering the U.S. with a fake passport, aiming to alert the international community to the practice.
While living in the U.S., Wang made contact with Chinese-American human rights activist Harry Wu -- himself once imprisoned in China.
Wu heads the Laogai foundation, a non-profit organization campaigning against the collection of organs from Chinese Prisoners.
According to Wu, Chinese government documents show Beijing is actively helping military hospitals make money selling the skin, corneas, kidneys and livers of executed prisoners.
"This human rights violation is very unique. It does not happen in any other country, only in China," Reuters quoted Wu saying.
Wu said patients outside of China who are willing to pay for the organs are helping to drive a growing trade.
Sometimes the money comes from Americans, he said, with a kidney for a foreign patient probably costing around $30,000.
According to an unwritten policy, he said, priority recipients of organs were high-ranking officials, wealthy overseas Chinese and other foreigners.
Human rights activists say China isn't the only guilty party and the business of organs for sale happens elsewhere.
But they say the practice of removing organs without consent from the prisoner or relatives was an abhorrent human rights violation.
"Congress cannot allow this horrific situation to go unchallenged," said U.S. Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who heads the panel that held Wednesday's hearing.
While some Congress members were skeptical whether Wang's allegations were true, Michael Parmly of the U.S. State Department's human rights bureau said the evidence was "overwhelming and growing".
"[The] sources who have reported this are credible and numerous," he said.
Ros-Lehtinen and other members of congress have introduced a resolution to prohibit visas for any Chinese physician seeking transplant related training in the United States.
She said the bill would send a strong human rights message to Chinese doctors.
"It tells the Chinese doctors that they better be careful, their visas will not be automatically stamped for approval," she said.
(from CNN website at http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/east/06/28/china.organ/ )
Excerpt from article on the website of the Laogai Research Foundation, at http://www.laogai.org/chinese/aboutus.html.
In 1984, the “Provisional Regulations on the Use of Dead Bodies or Organs from Condemned Criminals” was released jointly by the Supreme People’s Court, Supreme People’s Procuratorate, Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Public Health, and the Ministry of Civil Affairs. This document stipulates the conditions under which health personnel may harvest organs from executed prisoners, how these health personnel are to coordinate with prison and public security officials, and the confidentiality of the process. Even though the document specifically states that written consent must be obtained, when questioned on the practice, Chinese authorities have yet to produce any sort of viable consent form.
When officials wish to harvest the organs of a death-row prisoner, first a blood sample is taken for medical testing. Soon thereafter, the prisoner is executed with a shot to the back of the head. Doctors remove the organs that are then placed in solution for preservation and transported to nearby hospitals for transplantation. LRF has tracked media reports of people from all over Asia traveling to China to take advantage of the abundant supply of organs from executed prisoners. In news reports from Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, and Taiwan, doctors readily admit that organs come from executed prisoners and that consent is not an issue.
US State Department Country Reports on Human Rights have noted the practices of organ harvesting in China beginning in 1995 after the release of a Human Rights Watch report on the subject. Several members of the US Congress have also raised the issue of organ harvesting in various measures attempting to censure China for its human rights violations. In 1998, the European Parliament signed a resolution in opposition to the death penalty and organ harvesting as carried out in the People’s Republic of China.